The open-source NVIDIA Nova kernel driver gains improvements for GSP boot, vGPU support, firmware handling, and Hopper and Blackwell GPUs in code targeting Linux 7.3.
The Nova driver, NVIDIA’s open-source Rust-based kernel graphics driver and successor to Nouveau, is receiving further development for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window. The latest changes are part of ongoing work on the Linux Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) Rust infrastructure and the Nova driver.
The DRM Rust development for Linux 7.3 involves improving the I/O infrastructure, adding a SysMem backend for shared system memory with volatile access, and introducing RegistrationData and RegistrationGuard features to handle device resources using lifetime annotations. These changes form part of the broader effort to integrate Rust into the DRM subsystem of the Linux kernel.
In Nova, the latest changes include work to consolidate the GPU System Processor(GSP) boot process, vGPU boot process, and TLV firmware image format. The supporting driver code for NVIDIA’s Hopper and Blackwell GPU Architectures has also been improved, along with various fixes.
The latest changes continue NVIDIA’s development of Nova, with the driver being developed as the successor to Nouveau for open-source NVIDIA GPU kernel support. The changes are currently targeting the Linux 7.3 merge window, alongside other Rust-based DRM development.
